Linux in a Minute

Are you new to Linux? Are you an old hand, but want to brush up on your
command-line skills? Heck, are you just someone who likes to learn about
the tips we dream up here at Linux Journal? Our new video series on
LinuxJournal.com brings you new video tips almost every day. Here are
some of the topics we've recently covered:

With videos coming out almost every day, you're bound to find something of
use in our short one-minute tutorials. Check them out at
www.linuxjournal.com/linux-minute.

diff -u: What's New in Kernel Development

An effort to change the license on a piece of code hit a wall
recently. Mathieu Desnoyers wanted to
migrate from the GPL to the
LGPL
on some userspace RCU code. Read-Copy
Update is
a way for the kernel
to define the elements of a data object, without other running code
seeing the object in the process of formation. Mathieu's userspace
version provides the same service for user programs. Unfortunately,
even aside from the usual issue of needing permission from all contributors
to change the license of their contribution, it turns out
that IBM owns the patent to some of the
RCU code concepts, and it has
licensed the patent for use only in GPLed software. So, without
permission from IBM, Mathieu can get permission from all the
contributors he wants and still be stuck with the GPL.

Loadlin is back in active development! The venerable tool boots Linux
from a directory tree in a DOS partition, so all of us DOS users can
experiment with this new-fangled Linux thing. To help us with that,
Samuel Thibault has released Loadlin
version 1.6d and has taken over from
Hans Lerman as official maintainer of the code. The new version works
with the latest Linux kernels and can load up to a 200MB bzImage.
He's also migrated development into a mercurial repository. (Although
not as popular as git with kernel developers, mercurial does seem to
have a loyal following, and there's even a book available at
hgbook.red-bean.com.) After seven years of sleep, here's
hoping Loadlin has a glorious new youth, with lots of new features and
fun. It loads Linux from DOS! How cool is that?

Hirofumi Ogawa has written a driver for
Microsoft's exFAT filesystem,
for use with large removable Flash drives. The driver is read-only,
based on reverse-engineering the filesystem on disk. There doesn't seem
to be immediate plans to add write support, but that could change in a
twinkling, if a developer with one of those drives takes an interest
in the project. Hirofumi has said he may not have time to continue
work on the driver himself.

Meanwhile, Boaz Harross has updated the
exofs filesystem. exofs
supports Object Storage Devices (OSDs), a type of drive that implements
normal block device semantics, while at the same time providing access
to data in the form of objects defined within other objects. This
higher-level view of data makes it easier to implement fine-grained
data management and security. Boaz's updates include some ext2 fixes
that still apply to the exofs codebase, as exofs originally was an
ext2 fork. He also abandoned the IBM API in favor of supporting the
open-osd API instead.

Adrian McMenamin has posted a driver for
the VMUFAT filesystem, the
SEGA Dreamcast filesystem running on the Dreamcast visual memory unit.
Using his driver, he was able to manage data directly on the
Dreamcast. At the moment, the driver code does seem to have some bugs,
and other problems were pointed out by various people. Adrian has been
inspired to do a more intense rewrite of the code, which he intends to
submit a bit later than he'd first anticipated.

A new source of controversy has emerged in Linux kernel development.
With the advent of pocket devices that are intended to power down when
not in use, or at least go into some kind of power-saving state, the
whole idea of suspending to disk and suspending to RAM has become more
complicated. It's not obvious whether the kernel or userspace should
be concerned with analyzing the sleep-worthiness of the various parts
of the system, or how much the responsibility should be shared between
them. There seems to be many opinions, all of which rest on everyone's
idea of what is appropriate as well as on what is feasible. The
kernel is supposed to control all hardware, but the X Window System controls
hardware and is not part of the kernel. So, clearly, exceptions exist to
any general principles that might be involved. Ultimately, if no
obvious delineation of responsibility emerges, it's possible folks may
start working on competing ideas, like what happened initially with software
suspend itself.

The Web, Making Your Computer Obsolete

As a video creator, I often try as many different video editing options
I can find. I've used video editors on every platform, in every style
and every design. I never thought such a resource-intensive process
would be able to move to the Web, but as is all too often the case,
I was wrong.

If you are like me, you never even considered searching for on-line
alternatives for video editing software. You might want to reconsider.
I haven't had a chance to test them all, but a simple Google search for
“on-line video editor” provides a ton of options. Most of them are
completely free, and a few are rather robust. Jaycut (www.jaycut.com),
for example, has a look that almost rivals desktop video editing software.
Although on-line video editors haven't quite surpassed the abilities of their
desktop counterparts, I was more than impressed by how far they've come.
Because on-line video editing means you have your tools with you wherever
you go, the future of video editing might look very different. It sure
beats toting around an external hard drive full of raw DV footage.

Jaycut offers some great editing features right inside your browser.

LinuxJournal.com

As you read through this year's Readers' Choice Award winners, I'm sure
you'll find a few items you'll want to learn more about. You'll discover a
wealth of information about almost anything on the list at
LinuxJournal.com. With more than 15 years of articles, you'll find what you're
looking for, and maybe even learn how some of these tools have progressed
over the years.

Non-Linux FOSS

In our second Upfront installment highlighting non-Linux
FOSS projects, we present SharpDevelop.
SharpDevelop (aka #Develop) is an IDE for developing .NET
applications in C#, F#, VB.NET, Boo and IronPython.
SharpDevelop includes all the stuff you'd expect in a
modern IDE: syntax highlighting, refactoring, forms designer,
debugger, unit testing, code coverage, Subversion support and so on.
It runs on all modern versions of the Windows platform.

SharpDevelop is a “real” FOSS project; it's not controlled by
any big sinister corporation (and we all know who I'm talking about).
It has an active community and is actively upgraded.
At the time of this writing, version 3.0 just recently has been released.

Even if you use only Linux, you may be indirectly using SharpDevelop.
If you use any Mono programs, they probably were developed using the MonoDevelop IDE.
MonoDevelop was forked from SharpDevelop in 2003 and ported to GTK.

Delivering Content to Your Desktop with Miro

I've been a fan of Miro since it originally came out as a program
titled Democracy. This open-source, cross-platform project has
evolved over the years into an almost perfect example of how to watch
on-line media. Miro can play almost any non-DRM video format. What makes
it really unique, however, is its ability to retrieve fresh content
automatically. It supports the traditional on-line media providers, like
Revision 3, but it also adds the ability to subscribe to any RSS feed
of videos or even torrents of videos. Miro will download
torrent files automatically with its built-in BitTorrent client from any RSS feed
you throw at it. Add sites like Hulu.com to Miro's arsenal of content,
and you have an almost perfect video-watching experience.

Keep watching this project, because although there isn't yet an interface
that's easy to control from a couch, that's a pretty simple
change that would make Miro a candidate for your living-room television
portal. As it is right now, it's a great addition to anyone's computer
desktop. In fact, you can subscribe to Linux Journal's videos and have
them delivered to your desktop automatically. I'm not sure if being
stuck with my face on your desktop every week is a very good selling
point, but at least there isn't a subscription fee. Everything Miro
offers, including its software, is completely free. Check it out
at www.miro.org.

They Said It

Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual
property sense to everything it touches.

—Steve Ballmer, June 2001

Will we interoperate with products that come, like Linux,
from the Open Source world? Yes, we will. Will we encourage
people who want to do open-source development to do it
on top of Windows? Yes.

—Steve Ballmer, July 2008

Sun's doing tremendous damage to the project.

—Geir Magnusson Jr, referring to a Java licensing dispute
between Sun and the Apache Software Foundation

Religion-themed domains could provoke “bitter disputes”
that would force ICANN into “recognizing to a particular
group or to a specific organization the legitimacy to
represent a given religious tradition”.

—Monsignor Carlo Maria Polvani,
in a letter to outgoing ICANN chief Paul Twomey,
concerning new Internet domains, such
as .catholic, .islam, .muslim and so on,
or as The Register called
them, the dot god domains.

Just because something doesn't do what you planned
it to do, doesn't mean it's useless.

Trending Topics

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11am CDT, April 29th

Join Linux Journal and Pat Cameron, Director of Automation Technology at HelpSystems, as they discuss the eight primary advantages of moving beyond cron job scheduling. In this webinar, you’ll learn about integrating cron with an enterprise scheduler.